Category: Development

China’s strategy of economic colonisation of its regional neighbours has just been laid bare

Gwadar Port in Balochistan … in southern Pakistan, rather

… A restaurant owner is visited by representatives of a certain organisation that wishes to invest in his business. This is an offer he cannot refuse. Soon the “investors” are there every day, walking out sides of meat and crates of wine and liquor through the back door while the owner frets and worries about his vanishing profits. Eventually, when there is nothing left to take, the investors burn down the premises for the insurance money. Hence the old joke: “Sorry to hear about the fire, Lenny.” “Shh! Tomorrow.”

Well, it appears a “restaurant” that we might call “The Taste of Lahore”, or something similar, perhaps “The Karachi Grill” or “Memories of Rawalpindi”, has just been invested in by a certain powerful organisation. Let’s see whether anything is being walked out the back door, and whether there are any suspicious jerry cans of gasoline stacked in the alley out back.

In the previous post I briefly looked ahead to the relationship between India and the UK over the next few decades: it is only going to become deeper and more intertwined to the mutual benefit of both countries.

But India is also in the position now of crafting its own future as a “new” country, as Modi leads it away from retardation after the Congress corruption of the last seven decades. What sort of culture and economy will India follow as part of its growing identity and prosperity? I suggest it will be determined partly by the political realities surrounding India and partly by the artisanal DNA that India possesses and must now cultivate anew and capitalise on.

Modi entered Delhi facing an entrenched and obstructive government bureaucracy that was bespoke-designed over many decades to serve the bigwigs of Congress

Despite being Modi’s biographer and genuinely liking the man, I am not here to defend him. It is a fact that as we pass the two-year mark of the BJP administration in power, there are justified criticisms to be made. Overall the biggest complaint has to be the apparently slow and timid pace of change and reform – for, incidentally, nothing dramatically disastrous or unforgivable has occurred, despite such being endlessly predicted by Modi’s political and media enemies loyal to the Gandhi dynasty.

When I am asked, as I always am asked, the reason why Modi has not changed everything quickly and delivered India to its wonderful prosperous destiny already, I reply with an offering of a reality sandwich. First of all, Modi entered Delhi facing an entrenched and obstructive government bureaucracy that was bespoke-designed over many decades to serve the bigwigs of the Congress Party and the Gandhi dynasty. Very many careers were owed to and depended upon the established structure; forcing it to change was always going to be a Herculean task. The babus of government service constitute a complete society, unbelieveably loyal to that Gandhi dynasty, and changing their orientation would be a work of years and would require a master administrator.

This is the second post in an occasional series about the future of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which sit at the eastern edge of the Bay of Bengal facing Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. The open sea to the south gives these strategically important islands access to the Indian Ocean (next stop Australia) and onto the vastness of China’s wished-for sphere of influence in South Asia. It’s a perfect spot for an armed check-point and border control for all traffic travelling westward out of the Malacca Straits and a platform for defence that can vastly magnify India’s military footprint in the region.

India has scandalously neglected these utterly beautiful islands, already home to a tri-services base (the old ‘Project Yatrik’) and an under populated, underdeveloped local economy. In truth the Andamans are key to India’s future as an influential regional political power, not to mention an economic one (see Indian Ocean and India’s Security, Raj Narain Misra, 1986). If Goa is India’s California then the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are its Hawaii – it has the navy, not just the beaches, and the beaches are superior to those in Thailand, across the water.

First it was Facebook. India’s potentially enormous, and as yet largely untapped, internet and mobile phone market will see about half a billion people come online over the next few years (I hope soon to write at some length about its implications). And this in the country that will enjoy the world’s best economic growth for the next two decades.

Mark Zuckerberg was salivating over this juicy prospect and launched a portal called ‘Free Basics’ that tied the user to Facebook’s domain in exchange for free online access. Except of course it wasn’t free because Facebook decided what sites could be accessed and would eventually have its own access to the most valuable of all commodities: the users’ saleable metrics and private information, the bread and butter of Facebook’s business.

I am making a bet on India prospering disproportionately in the future compared to its past and I am inviting visitors to this website to engage with and object to my theory (‘theory’ because it could turn out wrong). After all, why should I believe that I am correct? There appears to be far more evidence from history that India will inevitably sink back into its old habits of futility, corruption and wishful thinking about an idealised past.

A friend of mine, a businessman from Mumbai, says to me, ‘India can make things 90% of the way but there’s no finish! Where is the last 10%?’ He thinks that Indians always run out of application and interest towards the end of a task. There is no polish to what they do and that everything – products and services – remains frustratingly second-rate, droopy and half-hearted. This has obvious implications for any Indian future.

Welcome

I am Andy Marino, biographer of Narendra Modi, and this site is designed to explain Indian economics and finance, government and politics, culture and history to Western investors, businessmen and entrepreneurs. For more information, click on my Intro section.